Have you guys been reading about this today (well, now yesterday) on the news sites? It's being covered everywhere and called the biggest scientific discovery in 50 years. CERN confirmed yesterday that the infamous Higgs field (and the Higgs Boson particle) which give matter mass, completes the standard model of physics. Steven Hawking even lost his famous $100 bet. Peter Higgs will likely win the next Nobel Prize for his work.

Last year CERN said they would be announcing their results the following summer. After 10 years of pouring through data by 2,100 members of the CMS team and 3,000 members of the ATLAS team, they are now 99.9996% sure what they found is in fact the Higgs, though they don't know yet if there is more than one form of the Boson. Further tests and studies need to be done and will be done to explore this extremely important scientific breakthrough in more detail.

On another note, here's an interesting fact: even though the LHC has likely achieved higher temperatures they have never published them, but the highest temperatures ever published come from RHIC (or the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider). When smashing gold atoms together at near the speed of light, the quark/gluon plasma temperatures reached an incredible 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit (4 trillion degrees Celcius) which is 250,000 times hotter than the inside of our sun.

Finally, I hope every American had a pleasant 4th of July. It is not only a major day in the history of our country but now will be known as a major day throughout the scientific community.

Not only did Hawking lose his $100 bet, my dad now owes me a buck. as a physics major, this is very exciting news to me indeed, and it made my morning.

Pleasant Noise: the study of the quantum world has had many drastic effects on society. For one, more basic quantum mechanics is the science used to create microchips, without electron tunneling, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Quantum computing on the other hand, would require us to measure the spin of an electron, and a working standard model will likely prove to be quite useful indeed. The engineering knowhow for containment of these expensive colliders is also what paved the way to making containment fields for fusion reactors, which, even if not a viable energy source as of yet, are one of the most effective ways to make radioactive medicine for cancer treatment. It all ties together, useful and abstract, exciting and mundane, and limiting study to that which seems economically safe enough creates a deficiency, a weak link in the knowledge base that our best minds can draw from when they ARE solving more earthly problems...its like running an LCD2- from an integrated sound card

Not only did Hawking lose his $100 bet, my dad now owes me a buck. as a physics major, this is very exciting news to me indeed, and it made my morning.
Pleasant Noise: the study of the quantum world has had many drastic effects on society. For one, more basic quantum mechanics is the science used to create microchips, without electron tunneling, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Quantum computing on the other hand, would require us to measure the spin of an electron, and a working standard model will likely prove to be quite useful indeed. The engineering knowhow for containment of these expensive colliders is also what paved the way to making containment fields for fusion reactors, which, even if not a viable energy source as of yet, are one of the most effective ways to make radioactive medicine for cancer treatment. It all ties together, useful and abstract, exciting and mundane, and limiting study to that which seems economically safe enough creates a deficiency, a weak link in the knowledge base that our best minds can draw from when they ARE solving more earthly problems...its like running an LCD2- from an integrated sound card

Thanks :] I never seem to hear about these things, I only ever read about the one thing they hope to achieve, not all the things that happen as a result, or along the way.
Hopefully the ITER breaks even and makes Nuclear fusion viable,

Did I read somewhere that the weight of the particle they found was actually much higher than they expected? Is there a laymen's explanation for that?

I'm waiting for quantum physics to give me what I really want: Instantaneous transportation across unlimited distances. I would even be willing to live with the consequences of having the source "me" instantly wink out of existence the moment "I" appeared at my destination.

Did I read somewhere that the weight of the particle they found was actually much higher than they expected? Is there a laymen's explanation for that?

I'm waiting for quantum physics to give me what I really want: Instantaneous transportation across unlimited distances. I would even be willing to live with the consequences of having the source "me" instantly wink out of existence the moment "I" appeared at my destination.

I believe it was 100 times more massive than any particle they had discovered before, or 100 times more massive than something.... look it up. :)

Did I read somewhere that the weight of the particle they found was actually much higher than they expected? Is there a laymen's explanation for that?

I'm waiting for quantum physics to give me what I really want: Instantaneous transportation across unlimited distances. I would even be willing to live with the consequences of having the source "me" instantly wink out of existence the moment "I" appeared at my destination.

Yes and no. The original standard model estimated the Higgs to be like 1TeV in size. Along the process of testing, they kept getting more and more data pointing towards about 100-150GeV (depending). The theory of supersymmetry actually explains why this would happen. And, since this is actually the case, supersymmetry finally gets a little bit of light shown on it. And that's good, because it's a wonderful theory that bridges dark matter with the Standard Model. And possibly gravity.

But, that's in the future. We have the rest of 2012 to mess around with Higgs and get as much data as we can. Then the LHC goes down for 20 months for upgrades. We will have that time to analyze all the data and start getting some ideas together. Finally, in 2014, we will have 14TeV collisions (currently 8TeV) to start breaking apart the quantum world even further. :D

I believe the Higgs Field will yield a whooooooooole lot of interesting things. At the level the Higgs Field operates, we could see gravity in action.

Through various theories of relativity, we may be able to get that teleportation that you're after. All we have to do is control gravity, fold it in on itself, make spacetime 2D, and voila. Easy peasy.

Yes and no. The original standard model estimated the Higgs to be like 1TeV in size. Along the process of testing, they kept getting more and more data pointing towards about 100-150GeV (depending). The theory of supersymmetry actually explains why this would happen. And, since this is actually the case, supersymmetry finally gets a little bit of light shown on it. And that's good, because it's a wonderful theory that bridges dark matter with the Standard Model. And possibly gravity.

But, that's in the future. We have the rest of 2012 to mess around with Higgs and get as much data as we can. Then the LHC goes down for 20 months for upgrades. We will have that time to analyze all the data and start getting some ideas together. Finally, in 2014, we will have 14TeV collisions (currently 8TeV) to start breaking apart the quantum world even further. :D

I believe the Higgs Field will yield a whooooooooole lot of interesting things. At the level the Higgs Field operates, we could see gravity in action.

Through various theories of relativity, we may be able to get that teleportation that you're after. All we have to do is control gravity, fold it in on itself, make spacetime 2D, and voila. Easy peasy.

Sign me up for the pre-order!

Transporters would be a huge upset to our economy. Location, location, location would cease to be important - I could sleep in California, work in Budapest and have lunch in Singapore and dinner in Paris. Our day/night cycle would be turned on it's head - when you want to sleep, just pop to a part of the world that is dark for the next 8 hours. We would probably finally evolve into no longer needing sleep. Yeah, I've thought about this a lot...

Very Happy too about the discovery ,but i hope until i die to know what we have before and beyond the universe ,nonetheless i would like to know we had an extraterrestrial contact (if secret government agency know it already).

Very Happy too about the discovery ,but i hope until i die to know what we have before and beyond the universe ,nonetheless i would like to know we had an extraterrestrial contact (if secret government agency know it already).

Btw , where are you now ,God?

In the hearts and minds of many individuals through out the world.
Proof is nothing in the eyes of a believer, that's why I gave up arguing about it a while back. Just loses friends.

There's a good chance it is a Higgs Boson imposter which is why they stopped short of declaring it a HB. Lots data scrubbing, etc. to go before they know for sure.

New data shows a possible 4 different Higgs. And I'm not talking about each Higgs Boson is actually 4 particles (which is part of the Standard Model), they saw some data showing 4 different Higgses.

Whatever they found, it's a new particle (or several). The 5 sigma error holds this as a 99.99999% probability. Whether it's the Higgs of the Standard Model, as it is in the model, or it's something different that does what Higgs is supposed to do. Either way, this is great. If the Higgs had been exactly as the model predicted, we would have been stuck with no where to go, as far as particle physics is concerned. This deviation is just leading to more questions, more answers, and so much more interesting stuff.